Why Emma was Grumbling

So there was kind of a reason for Emma to grumble.  Not really, but kind of.  She had a ball to get to that night. 

She didn't need the whole day to get ready, as we all know.  I once got ready for a Prom in a half hour- of course I don't think I took a shower after work (gross) and I threw my hair up on top of my head and didn't wear make-up.  I never was a girly girl.  It didn't turn out to be the best Prom- go figure!

Emma was going to the JROTC ball as a representative of the Yearbook staff.  Her date was the Yearbook teacher who also brought her husband and a couple other representatives along.  She had lots of dates.

  One guy did ask her if she could be sort of his date when he found out she was going, just so he didn't have to sit with his unit- everyone that was anyone had a date, so the only people still sitting at the unit table were freshmen.  She told him that if he paid the teacher back, she would be his date.  He didn't, but he still got out of sitting with the freshmen.  She even was nice enough to take a picture with him.

Let's just say, she is a really nice girl and I hope she doesn't get taken advantage of at college!  Love her!

Presidents Weekend

During winter season for sports, Sam has wrestled.

He turned out to be not half bad at it, claiming second place for his weight group on the team even though he has never wrestled before.  He was expected to go to the European championships, both because of who he would face at sectionals and because of his record of wins and losses.  Therefore, we planned nothing.  The week before Sectionals, he decided it was time to take on his dad and his dad, being the man that he is, decided not to go to easy on him.  Development: strained back and neck muscles, Result: he actually lost to the opponent that he had always beat before.  Now there were some extra problems in this match.  The scoring was not the best and when the coach went up to complain, the ref reviewed the scores written down and said, yes, there should have been a tie between the two and they should have gone to overtime, but he already declared the other guy the winner and he was moving on.  Also, when they replayed the match, the ref had forgotten to give Sam one point, therefore, Sam should have actually won.  Either way, he was given a good chance at a wild card, because of his record.  He came home a couple days later and said they had given him the wild card, but then decided that they had too many wild cards and cut two of them, him being one.  The next day he came home late.  He said at the beginning of the day they told him that one guy dropped out and so he was back in.  When he showed up for practice, they told him the guy was back in and Sam was out, again.  The poor kid- in, out, in, out!  It was horrible!  Needless to say, he stayed out and didn't get to go, but the team brought home the big win for the year!  European Champions!

Instead we had our sick Brother in law come down and have fun with us at Heidelberg Castle.

 They had an old Pharmacy museum in the castle as well- this is an Enema

 This is a mold for suppositories.

 Big wine barrel

 The biggest wine barrel- this is how the town paid it's taxes.

 Part of the turret fallen down.

On a beautiful walk to find the 7 old mills.

 We only had time for 2.

And to a Fasching parade.  

It got so cold we couldn't feel our toes by the end of this very long and very witch heavy parade.

They did all kinds of tricks like taking the laces out of people's shoes, taking their shoes, stealing the kids and carting them away- that happened to one of our group,  (They finally let them go about 2 or 3 blocks away (he was 7!)) and throwing lots of confetti.  Every once in a while they threw candy too.  There wasn't as much candy as I remember.  We left a little early and headed towards the car, which was along the parade, so we ended up seeing the whole thing.  We also bought some of the special Fasching  donut, the Faschingskrapfen.  It tasted like a 3 day old rectangular donut- which is very well might have been and why it was on super sale!  Overall a fun Presidents day weekend.

I go back and forth

My opinion keeps going back and forth on these new seminary requirements.  First of all, I think they had to do this, because they stopped teaching the scriptures in church- which I have a serious problem with.  I love the Come Follow Me program for YM/YW, but not for Sunday School.  LDS people used to be known for their scriptural knowledge.  Very few people have read or studied the Old Testament like we do, or did, I should say.  A graduating high school student would have read and studied the Old Testament at least twice, as well as all the other scriptures.  Not any more.  Since they will get each scripture thoroughly only once now, the requirements to pass have been increased.   Besides having to read the entire set of scriptures- which I really think should have been mandatory all along, they will have to take tests.
They make it very clear that the testing is for learning purposes and that you can take the tests as many times as possible until it is passed.  That's good.  Except when you realize that the tests are right in the middle of midterms and finals.   My children (and my husband and I, I might add) already get up before 5:30 am every morning, so that they can go to seminary.  Since they do compete in sports, they don't come home until close to 7 pm at night.  They are exhausted, hungry and still have homework to do.  Because we live in Europe and travel among competitors is so far, Saturdays are meet days.  It's a 4 am wake up call on these days.  This leaves Sunday as their only free/sleep a normal amount of time for a growing teenager day.  I encourage them not to do homework on Sundays, but some weeks they just can't help it.  Finals week is always a tough time, but midterms are especially hard, since sports are still going during those testing days.  Now we are going to throw another large test on top of that?  Oh, and by the way, you have to take it over and over until you pass it.  Are you crazy!!
The report on the LDS website quotes the scriptures:  Where much is given, much is required.  I understand this.  I also agree with the quote by Thomas Paine, "what we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly."  I agree 100% that release time seminary students should have to treat this as a class and do the class work and take tests.  I just think that the early morning seminary kids are already obtaining something a little on the expensive side.  Because, apparently teenagers need more sleep than me, yet I am exhausted every night by 8 pm, too.  I cheer every day there is no seminary.  So can I blame my kids if they grumble a little about it?  They don't.  They are actually very good.  But I couldn't blame them.  The only time they try to skip it, is usually one or two days at the first of each sport season when they are extra exhausted.  And I let them.  Because I don't want them to resent seminary or me.
Let's set aside the early morning argument and let's focus on another aspect of early morning seminary versus release time.  My husband is a former CES employee.  He taught seminary full time and got paid for it.  I have seen the process they go through to pick those teachers and it is cut throat. The release time people may not get their favorite style of teacher (emotional based, knowledge based, fun/game based), but they get some of the best teachers out there, hands down.  Now let's look at early morning- who do they get?  Not always your top of the line teacher.  It has to work with the schedule of whoever is called to do it.  That leaves a very small pool of people to choose- generally females whose children are all in high school or graduated or who don't have any children.  Sometimes there is that odd man who is self employed or something like that who can make it work, or a woman that can do it in her home while her children still sleep, but even with that the pool is small.  And from that small pool they have to choose the most likely to be able to teach.  It doesn't generally work out super well!  They do their absolute best, but even the best teacher has a hard time keeping sleepy teenagers engaged and now you have someone who may or may not know the scriptures well themselves and may or may not know how to teach worth a darn, trying to do it.  Not quite comparable- is it?!  Yet the requirements are the same.
So now the grumbling has started.  "Tests? They are making us take tests- during testing week!!"  "This is stupid.  I'm not doing it."  Etc, etc- all the things teenagers say when they are mad.  This is something I have never had to face before in regards to seminary.  And I'm not sure I can try to counter it, because I'm not so sure that I disagree with their being upset.  So, what would you do?  What do you think?  Am I missing something?
PS- after hearing that this post was passed around, I wanted to make absolutely clear that I am not saying that the early morning seminary teachers are the bottom of the barrel of anything.  I am not insinuating that my children have had terrible seminary teachers- they have more than a few and each one tried her hardest to engage the children and make them enjoy and love the scriptures, yet they are working at a disadvantage- is what I was specifically saying- they are not professional, they have little time to prepare and they are working with early morning, sleepy teenagers.  This is not comparable to full time CES employees.

Last Quarter of the Year Speed Reading Style

The last quarter of our year was exciting.  So exciting, I didn't seem to have time to write about it, so now that it's 2015, it's time to end 2014.  Let's do it speed reading with a ton of pictures style.

Autumn was beautiful.  I loved the days we got out with the boys and played football and enjoyed our neighbors' dogs.

Went on a couple of school trips with Joseph.  One to the Lichtenstein Castle (which is not in Lichtenstein)

and the fog caves

and the other to the science museum.

Emma had her Cross Country banquet where she got a varsity letter

 Seniors

Just the Senior Girls

and her coaches got shaved- one mustache and one head, because both the boys and the girls took European state championships this year.

Sam had his Football banquet where he got a coaches award for his huge heart despite his small size.

Emma, as the president of the brand new Red Cross club, kicked off their first event ever- a Zombie run.  There were over 80 participants and about 20 zombies.

It was a rousing success.  I was the volunteer nurse and got to ride around in a gator.

We had Halloween with the traditional potluck outside for the whole building and tons of children running around and tons of candy!

And a Trunk of Treat at the church.

We went to Berlin, with stops in Moedlareuth (little Berlin) where we got to walk around the wall and go up in the guard tower,

 Um, you can just walk out this way!

 We found the way out!

Border Guard Sam

 Memorial given to them by the German government

 Memorial given to them by the American troops that patrolled the area around their little stretch of wall.

Walking the wall!

 Wittenberg,

The church where Martin Luther hung his 95 point thesis.

 and Leipzig.

Possibly Bach- they dug up 3 corpses and put in the one they thought looked the most like the late composer.

We walked around Berlin for 3 days

 Straddling both sides of the former wall

 Brandenburg Gate

 Holocaust memorial

 Checkpoint Charlie

 World clock showing what time it was in Western United States while we were there

 Tropigraphy of horror museum and wall display

We found trampolines in the middle of the walkway!

and enjoyed the 25th anniversary celebration of the wall coming down with Mikel Gorbachov and some very sedate Germans.

We found a chocolate wall and a chocolate volcano- Yum-

We found the Ampelman store and got yummy Ampelman gummis

and we found the candy bomber memorial (actually a memorial to the whole airlift, but Max really wanted to see the candy bomber memorial.)

The lichtgrenze or light wall was pretty cool.  They let all the balloons go during the celebration.

We stopped in Dresden on our way home.

This thing is made out of hundreds of dresden ceramic tiles!

Rob met up with Elder Kress in Ramstein.

Our little base had their first ever Christmas market.  The kids loved it,

 especially the snowboarding,

ATV's

 and ice pick wall climb.

Rob turned 49-1

We flew in and out of the tiniest airport ever

and spent a week during Thanksgiving driving on the wrong side of the road in Ireland.

It was divine,

Ballycarberry Castle

There are structures like this all over the place in Ireland and nobody does much with them.  They figure it will bring bad luck for them if they tear them down or anything.  Makes it rather unsafe, but we are that kind of family, so we ignored common sense and climbed all over this crumbling structure, even to the third floor!

Blarney Castle

Sam and Rob kissed the Blarney stone.  I kissed Rob afterwards- I decided that I only wanted second hand contact with something that everyone spits on!

Going up and down the stairs with your eyes closed gives you your wish.  We all got our wishes!

Cliffs of Moher

One of the many circle forts in the area.  This one was on the Ring of Kerry

We stopped to go see the ocean close up at the start of the Ring of Dingle and these dingleberries along with Sam got totally wet.  That was the end of us stopping on the Ring.

Hot chocolate stop in Dublin

Dublin Castle

Our Thanksgiving dinner in Dublin

There were decorate streets and a fun Christmas market with the most amazing fish chowder in Dublin

Newgrange- burial mounds- older than the pyramids or Stonehenge.

Bishop Patrick

Tara

Waterford

Irish folktales inside of the oldest structure in Waterford

Rock of Cashel

If you can hop around the cross several times on one leg your wife will be super hot.  Sam tried it out.

You got something else if you could touch your hands around the cross.  Joseph tried that out.

On the freeway- what?

The only exception to the divine stay was the tiny roads and high speed traffic going the wrong way!  If you thought Germany had tiny roads, go try driving in Ireland!

We all helped decorate the tree and get ready for Christmas on our return.

I went to the Chocolate festival in Tuebigen

Yep all this was made out of chocolate! 

and the Christmas market in Ulm.

My friend Christa

 Cathedral

 Live animals in the manger scene

Ulm Cathedral

We had St. Nicholas day

I was in charge of the ward Christmas party as the activities leader in the Presidency.  The President did a ton of work for it.

She painted all the table covers and roofs

We spent most of the day setting up and I even cut my finger cutting up some trees.  It turned out amazing.

 The Young men and Young women doing the 12 days of Christmas Mormon style

One of the Christmas booths all decorated

 Best compliment ever:  I wasn't going to come, but I did and I stayed the whole time! 

 We had a good old fashioned German market, with stations for the kids to do all kinds of things- like build a snowman, shoot Rudolph with nerf guns, etc , wursts and hot drinks, face painting and street performers.

We went to the Christmas market and Medieval market in Esslingen as a family.

 advent calendar house

 Hand powered ferris wheel

Sam and Max dipped candles

and we had yummy soup.

Emma  and Sam both helped me make cookies to give away.

We had Christmas with Uncle Rick who is stationed in Germany for the next 6 months.

We had a great New Year's Eve.

Interesting Asian math that made the girls win!

And now it's 2015!  Happy New Years!